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Well, we hope it was water; the men’s washroom is directly on the other side of the wall.

A urinary tract complication was not the most pressing issue for the Canadian pairs team — despite the stereophonic eeewwwwsss blurted out — in their short program competition here at Skate Canada.

Duhamel and Radford, reigning bronze world medallists, are in first, with the free skate scheduled for Saturday. But only by a whisker — .15 of a point separating the Canadians from Italians Stefania Berton and Ondrej Hotarek (he’s actually Czech-born). And .55 is all that’s separating the top three teams the Canadians from the Italians from the Chinese.

“Last season, by the end of the season, we had a formula for going out there and having a good competition,” said Radford, after scanning the details of their 69.57 score. “We didn’t really learn that until around January nationals. I think that for our beginning-season skates, this is what is a little bit expected of us, to come out and skate a perfectly clean program. A perfectly clean program might actually . . .”

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Here Duhamel cuts in: “Spook us. We don’t start out season like that.”

Radford: “Never really have.”

In other words, like every other skater on the Grand Prix circuit, they gain momentum as the season progresses. This was only their opening assignment, and it showed.

Following a huge triple twist lift, Duhamel stepped out of triple Lutz in side-by-side jumps and then grabbed the ice with her hand for traction on the landing of a throw triple Lutz. If anything, a score of almost 70 points could be seen as generous, except the quality and levels on their other elements were quite high.

“There were some mistakes that were a little bit uncharacteristic and that we weren’t anticipating making,” admitted Radford. “But I think the flow was better. Our second mark (component scores) is right around where we finished last season.”

The couple skated to “Tribute”, a piece of music written by Radford — who’s an accomplished musician — in memory of his former coach, Paul Wirtz, who died of cancer in 2006, which made it an extremely emotional performance.

“When we hit that first leap of the footwork, it gave me a chill feeling, especially at the very end . . . with the death spiral,” said Radford. “It is a different experience to hear my own music. It just creates a sort of deep centered feeling inside of me.”

Duhamel spoke to Radford before the music began: “We always do, just reminding each other to stay focused and, if something happens, to get right back into the program. That’s something that took us a long time to learn as a team. We used to make a mistake and it would rattle us, and then we’d make another mistake and another mistake.

“We stumbled on the triple Lutz, but we came around and did a great lift, got some of our best marks on that lift. It’s disappointing more for the throw Lutz — we should be nailing that, we’ve been doing it for four years now. There’s not really an excuse for that.”

Last year, Duhamel and Radford skated a clean short and earned a score of 64. So they’re on an upward trajectory, having joined the elite flight of pairs.

Arguably, however, the bigger splash was made by the Italians, with their entertainment program skated to the soundtrack from The Mask. Their dismount of a reverse lasso lift is breathtakingly dramatic, requiring immense strength on the part of Hotarek.

Hotarek’s skates, by the way, only caught up with him mid-Friday afternoon. They’d somehow been lost on the flight to New Brunswick from Detroit.

“They got stuck in Chicago,” said Berton. “And we were never in Chicago.”

They’re 69.38 is a career personal-best for the short.

“We’re getting closer and closer to 70.”

China’s Wenjing Sui and Cong Han, three-time world junior championships, are in third with a score of 69.02.

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